Monday, June 29, 2009

Although she has no formal training as an economist, she has worked on and off as a financial regulator in Washington for nearly two decades. In 2006, George W. Bush appointed her to run the F.D.I.C., the agency that, established during the Depression, insures bank deposits. The position has a five-year term and is usually held by an anonymous bureaucrat, but Bair has forced her way to the center of the debate over the financial crisis.

Everyone associated with the Lenny Dykstra interview on HBO Sports from Spring 2008 should be ashamed of themselves. In case you don't know, up until recently, Lenny Dykstra (yes the former baseball player) has been building a name for himself in the business world. Unfortunately, the recession seems to have hit him pretty hard.

A recap of my favorite part:Goldberg: "What do you say to all those people who say once you were flying high, now you are flat broke?"Dykstra: "I don't know, man." (pulls out $75 cash from his pocket)Goldberg: "Ok, so you have $75 in your pocket, that doesn't make you rich."

And really, Cramer just can't win (see the first clip), what an idiot.

Uhazi is drowning in a sea of debt. And, like millions of other Americans, it is a debt load that she built up slowly over more than two decades of easy credit that made it all too simple to spend. Now she worries she won’t be able to pay it off because of the recession, which has led to a reduction in her salary and an increase in her credit card bills.

Doesn't sound too bad, until you see that the "sea of debt" is actually $60,000. How do you rack up debt like that and not notice?

Monday, June 22, 2009

...I’m here with you young men today because your parents wanted me to speak to you about service—that is, serving others and giving back to the broader community for the blessings that you have received in your life. But that is a speech for a later time in your life. Don’t get me wrong, serving others is really, really important. It truly is the secret to happiness in life. I swear to God. Money won’t do it. Fame won’t do it. Nor will sex, drugs, homeruns or high achievement. But now I am getting preachy....

Sunday, June 21, 2009

I'm about 6 weeks behind on the Economist right now (hey, I'm a busy guy) and I was catching up over the weekend. I was shocked when I read this line in this April 30th article about job recruitment:

A provision in the Troubled Asset Relief Programme requires companies that receive government funds to hire Americans before foreigners.

Why do we do this to ourselves? This idea that there will be a limited amount of highly skilled jobs going forward just isn't based in reality. We need to attract top tier talent to the US and turning away people who want to be here just isn't smart policy.

Isn't it great how provisions like this just "sneak" in to major legislation?

There has been a lot of recent discussion and disagreement over a "public" health care option. Some of the Democrats, including the President, want a public health care option that would be similar to the health care plan offered to members of congress. This public plan would be just one plan that people could choose from when selecting their health insurance. As can be imagined, this idea hasn't gone over very well with Republicans. However, the other day some health care executives did a good job of unintentionally making the case for such a plan:

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

So just to be clear here, people enroll and pay their health insurance premiums in order to be covered when something goes wrong, but when they get sick, these insurance companies cancel their coverage. This practice must have been going on under the radar and surely couldn't be endorsed by the CEO's of these companies right?

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show "intentional fraud."

The answer from all three executives:

"No."

Wow. A public option would force these insurance companies to treat their customers fairly.

Monday, June 15, 2009

One of Kunstler’s consistent themes is that America has become a nation of juvenile-minded people who live in a fantasyland of cultural distraction and have forgotten how to do real stuff. We’re good at getting creative tattoos and minutely calculating the social implications of our hairdos — but not so good at the hard and relentless work of looking after the foundations of our society. We came into a vast amount societal capital, and like a spoiled trust fund kid sobering up after an epic binge, we’re starting to realize that we’ve burned through the inheritance and are going to have go get a job at Burger King or something.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

In case you haven't been following the election in Iran, most reports are calling the "results" a fraud. Very little information other than the total percentage of the votes received by each candidate have been officially reported.

Andrew Sullivan has the best roundup I've seen and has been blogging the election all weekend. The latest news is of disturbing violence towards the protesting students:

I'm getting several reports of a brutal assault on the students of Tehran University. It's part of an attempt to terrify people into not rallying tomorrow.

Our Deal

The markets are crashing, thousands of people are losing their jobs and the government keeps funneling money into broken banks. This little blog will help explain why this is happening and how we fix it.

I'd like to preface this experiment with a contract between myself and my readers. My promise to you is that I will be civil, non-ideological, well researched and honest. In return, I only ask that you think.